


hope to come

by interstellarbeams



Category: Cloak & Dagger (TV 2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), F/M, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Love Confessions, Minor Original Character(s), mentions of Adina Johnson, mentions of Evita Fusilier, mentions of Melissa Bowen, mentions of Otis Johnson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 05:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19041766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interstellarbeams/pseuds/interstellarbeams
Summary: Something is happening, the people around Ty keep disappearing and the one person he can’t bear to lose is nowhere to be found.





	hope to come

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Denise, Gretchen, and Amber for all the encouragement! And to Katie for dealing with my mess and impatience. 
> 
> For oliviaubrcy (twitter) who kinda started this ball rolling! I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> This is kind of a conglomeration of canon, my imagination and what I think probably happened to those who survived the Snap and were left behind to figure out what the heck happened. 
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated! <3

i’ma walk right through the smoke and fire  
when it comes down to the wire  
now you don’t have to stand alone  
_smoke & fire_ — cuebrick feat. karra 

————

Ty knew something was wrong before there was anything apparently wrong. A feeling came over him, a coldness that was inconsistent with the bright sun that pierced his eyes as he looked up toward the sky. 

A dog barked in the distance, a police siren wailed and the squeak of breaks as a car stopped at the stop sign down the street were all familiar, but Ty felt a prickle of fear run down his spine. He dropped the basketball he had been holding and it rolled off the cement and came to a rest against the bright green grass of the lawn as he ran up his front steps and opened the glass-paned front door. 

He didn’t even shut the door, the glass shaking in its mounting as it collided with the wall, which he knew his mom would yell at him for later but in that moment he didn’t care about future punishments, only the weird foreboding that now left his stomach churning and his palms sweating.

“Mom!” he called, his sneakers squeaking on the hardwood floors as he came to a stop in the kitchen where he had last seen his mother. 

“Mom?” he called again, but in a quieter voice as he stared at the water running in the sink and took in the stench of burning garlic from the pan on the stove that stung his nose. 

Ty didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like his mom to just up and leave, especially during dinner preparation. She would have turned off the stove and the faucet if she had left to buy a forgotten ingredient at the store. 

They had planned a celebration tonight. Everything had finally been cleared up and he was no longer a suspect in Detective Connors’ “death.” She had so many things to do to prepare, and he didn’t think she would leave without telling him where she was going, especially after everything their family had been through. Come to think of it, he would have seen the car leave the garage from his spot shooting hoops in the driveway. 

Ty stood there for a moment more before he crossed to the door leading into the garage and opened it, the rush of the water in the sink drowned out by the thumping of blood in his ears. The family SUV still sat in the garage. Tiny pebbles on the cement floor of the garage ground underneath his feet as he stepped up to the car and placed his hand on the hood. The engine was cold. Dread flooded his system and he had to catch himself against the laundry sink.

“Shit,” Ty cursed as his mind raced, any and all explanations for his mother’s disappearance running though his head as he walked back into the kitchen and shut off the running water and the burner on the stove.

Ty snatched up his mom’s cell phone from the countertop, his still resting on the grass outside and scrolled through the contacts until he reached his dad’s name a lone heart emoji next to it in his mom’s contact list. Ty clicked on it, his heart continuing to pound in his chest as he listened to the pulse of the dial tone.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” he repeated like a mantra as he paced the space between the counter and the dining area. He rubbed a hand across his forehead as the continuous ringing hummed through the stillness.

All of a sudden a loud crash split the quiet afternoon, shaking the ground beneath his feet and causing the dishes in the cabinets to rattle. Ty jumped, the phone that still rang held tight in his hand as he teleported out of his house. 

A cloud of stinking gray smoke that had nothing to do with his cloak billowed up from the neighboring yard and a car horn blared continuously. Ty teleported again and landed in the neighbor’s yard at the thought of someone in trouble who might need his help.

The crumpled metal of the hood of the car obscured his view through the front windshield so he immediately moved to the driver’s side door, yanking it open he thanked God that it was unlocked but to his surprise there wasn’t anyone in the front seat or even in the back. A powdery gray substance settled on the leather seat and on the black carpet of the floorboard. 

“What the hell?” Ty muttered to himself as he reached out a finger before pulling his hand back. A memory of him as a little boy, standing by his father’s side as he accepted a jar of ashes from the mortician at his grandfather’s funeral service, suddenly flitted through his mind. He recoiled at the thought of cremated remains and instantly teleported back to his home. 

The house was eerily quiet around him and the cherrywood floors under his feet were so shiny he could see his reflection in them. He honestly felt like he might cry as he stood in the middle of the foyer alone. His mother was gone, his father wasn’t answering his phone … even their neighbor mysteriously vanished from her own car. _What was going on?_

Ty scrubbed a hand over his face, the weight of the phone in his other hand reminding him of its existence. He opened it with an audible click, automatically typing in Evita’s phone number and pressing the phone back to his ear. 

His hand shook as he smoothed it over the T-shirt he wore, the sweat around the neck and under the arms cooling in the air-conditioned house and erupting goosebumps onto his arms as he listened to the emptiness on the other line, then the bright, upbeat voice as Evita’s voicemail message picked up. 

The bubbly sound of her voice was so different from the Evita of the last few weeks as she had lost the only guardian she had ever known, her aunt, mother and grandmother all rolled into one.

Ty felt a sting of regret that Andre had managed to steal all of Tandy’s hope and the last of Evita's family all in one fell swoop.

Then Evita had decided to call it quits. Her voice had shaken when she told him, the rumble of the guests at her grandmother’s house after the funeral dulled by the closed door between them and the mourners. He wasn’t sure how to feel about it then. The tears on her face had made his heart melt and he wanted to reach out and comfort her, but she would have none of it. She ducked her head immediately, wrapping her arms around herself as she left the room and _him_ behind. 

He had felt lost then. Not empty but confused. Evita hadn’t given him an explanation, but he felt the guilt of neglect, that maybe he had pushed her away without meaning to. 

Tandy had been there for him then. 

He had teleported to the church and there she was, sitting on the floor, a old blanket underneath her with her blonde hair tucked behind her ears. 

She had teased him at first, despite the fact that it was a solemn day with the loss of Chantelle and Andre still wreaking his particular brand of havoc through NOLA. She couldn’t resist a jab at his khakis and button-up shirt, what she called his horrible fashion sense. He hadn’t rolled his eyes like he usually did, an embarrassing heat still rolling over him and making his ears burn, his pride stung more than anything. 

“What’s wrong?” she had asked as she got up to come closer, her footsteps muffled by the old quilt.

He had stayed silent for a moment, but the weight of her eyes on him pressed him to open his mouth.

“Evita broke up with me,” he spoke quietly as he loosened the tie he had borrowed from his father. 

“Oh,” she breathed out with the same intensity, her wide brown eyes never leaving his face despite his attempts to keep his head down. She had the advantage of being much shorter than him. 

“How are you feeling?” she asked, lifting her small hand to rest on his forearm where he had them crossed over his chest. The touch of her hand was warm and he suddenly felt the urge to grab ahold of it, to feel the smallness of her fingers against his palm. 

“Embarrassed,” he admitted with a shrug. 

“What for?” Tandy scoffed.

“I feel like I let her down. Like it was my fault because I didn’t tell her I was OK sooner. I just watched over her and thought that it would be enough.” 

“Ty!” Tandy dropped her arms dramatically against her sides. “What were you supposed to do? Come riding in on a white horse like her knight in shining armor? You were on the run, you could have been found and arrested at any moment as a _murderer_ , a cop killer. You did what you could. You did your best and if that isn’t enough for her, then she doesn’t deserve you.”

Ty shook his head, sitting down heavily on the altar step and staring at his hands. He felt like a ship at sea without an anchor, but it didn’t hurt as much as he thought it might, the loss of Evita. 

They had been close and clicked immediately, but then there was the whole mess with Roxxon and his powers manifesting then saving the world, or at least their small corner of it. _Tandy_ had happened and he didn’t know whether to be relieved that he still had her or resentful that she had helped cause the rift in his and Evita’s relationship, but then she sat down next to him and he felt all of that anger and darkness evaporate like the morning dew in the summer sun.

They sat in silence for a moment. Tandy sighed then rested her head against his shoulder and he felt his shoulders relax, the tension of the past few hours releasing. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are _you_ sorry?”

“It seemed like the appropriate response.”

“Thanks a lot.” Ty laughed as he pulled away from her and she had to catch herself before she fell over. 

“What do you want me to say? I can drag Evita instead if you want.”

“No, _no_ ,” Ty shook his head, “forget it. I was just feeling sorry for myself. I’m really OK.”

“Are you sure?” Tandy asked, staring up at him. “I can start with her job. Creepy tour guide makes for a great jumping-off point.”

“Tandy.” He knew he should feel offended for Evita’s sake, but a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth at Tandy’s irreverent jokes. 

“What? I said I _could_ , not that I was gonna. I like her, even if she did break your heart.”

“She didn’t break my heart. It was just _unexpected_ is all.” He scuffed the toe of his shoe against the dusty floor, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“You aren’t lying to me, are you? Cause I will find out if you are, Tyrone Johnson, and you won’t like me when I’m angry.” Tandy poked her tongue out at him and he chuckled.

“Yeah, I’m gonna be alright.”

She sat back down on the quilt and patted the spot next to her and he sat down, crossing his legs as he stretched out beside her. He stared at the white sheet she had set up for their screen as she flipped the projector on, pushed the next tape into the connected VCR and pressed play, starting the next episode of “Zorro.”

She plopped down next to him, a plastic bag crinkling as she pulled out a pack of Oreos and passed it to him. He could really go for some milk right now, the black-and-white video was grainy and the church was drafty, but everything was going to be OK because he had her. The blade to his cape. 

————

 

He hung up the phone, after the beep of the voicemail, unsure why he had called Evita first and not Tandy, his best friend.

A sudden thought hit him, _What if she was gone, too? What would he do then?_

He teleported to his room, quickly grabbing up his hoodie and slinging it around his shoulders. 

A fierce wind blew around the house, pushing against the open front door and slamming it into the wall again. The sound of police sirens grew closer as the city erupted into chaos, but Ty ignored them all.

He stared at the framed family photo on his dresser for a moment — a picture of younger him and his parents, smiling, Billy wearing his black hoodie with his long arm wrapped around Ty’s shoulders — and made a quick decision. His heart felt like it dropped into his stomach as he left it behind and teleported to the only place he knew where Tandy could possibly be.

 

————

 

The quiet felt even more pronounced when he landed in Tandy’s yard. Her home was on the outskirts of the city, but he could hear someone crying nearby and it made him even more nervous than the chaos erupting had. 

He hadn’t had the chance to turn on a TV, but he had a bad feeling that what he would find if he switched it on would be worse than anything he could imagine.

He pushed that thought away and opened the screen door with a creak of hinges and knocked on the door.

“Tandy? Ms. Bowen? Is anyone home?” he called, the wind chimes hanging above the door setting off a jangling tune as his fist hit the faded, paint-covered wood. 

After a few more minutes of knocking he blew out a breath, uneasiness clawing at him. His stomach churned with fear and he thought he might be sick, but he wouldn’t stop searching now. 

Glancing around and seeing no one, the crying he had heard earlier silent, so he put his hand to the doorknob and turned it. The door opened and he stepped into a room that was slowly darkening as the sun sunk beneath the horizon. Plush carpet softened his footsteps as he glanced around the living room. 

The walls were covered by a vintage-looking printed wallpaper and a clock ticked somewhere in the house. The TV was off, but a book rested on the coffee table face down as if someone was about to walk back into the room and pick it up, but that could have been there for days. He had no way of knowing. 

He worked his way to the kitchen, hoping that might give him a clue as to whether there had been any recent occupancy. The light hanging over the table flickered with every step he took, adding another dose of creepiness to the whole situation. Ty had to remind himself he wasn’t in a horror movie, though it was starting to feel more and more like he was. 

There wasn’t a smell of burning food, like at his house or a running sink, not even the hum of a radio left on a local station. He rounded the island and came to stand in front of the sink. The dishes in the sink were resting in sudsy water but they were still dirty. Ty didn’t know much about Tandy’s day-to-day life with her mother, but he was pretty sure she wasn’t one to wash the dishes. 

A half-eaten sandwich sat on a plate on the island, a cup of coffee, or was it tea, sitting next to it. He wrapped his hand around the mug but found the ceramic cool to the touch. Tandy’s mom must have been home recently then, if she was eating and washing dishes. But had she disappeared, too? And where was Tandy? _Was she OK? Did she need him?_

He was confused and alone and he didn’t like it. He felt again like he had after Evita had broken up with him, adrift with nothing to anchor him. He was reminded of the moment when he had fallen in the bay, the flash of the gunfire as the bullets hit his brother’s body playing before his eyes like his favorite movie except he didn’t want to see his brother’s death over and over again.

He walked down the hall, any hopes that he might have had when he left his house crumbling by the minute, but he had to check just to make sure that he was right and that she wasn’t here. 

The door to the bathroom was open and so were the bedrooms. The lights were off, but the rooms were lit slightly from the last of the sun’s rays and he was able to see that they were empty. A tired Tandy didn’t rest in any of the beds like a wayward Sleeping Beauty waiting for her Prince Charming to rescue her.

Another wailing cry, almost like a baby’s, rang out and Ty turned on his heel, went down the hall and walked out the door. His intent to find whoever was making that noise, a frown deepening between his dark brows as he left the house. He decided not to teleport, afraid to freak out whoever it was more than was necessary. The sound of the crying pierced his ears as well as his heart — an audible response to pain. 

“Hello?” He walked around the edge of Tandy’s home, seeing the old tires he had helped move from their front yard resting in a stack against the side of the fallen-down shed in their backyard. 

Dusk had fallen so it was shadowy under the trees, but another wail sounded in front of him so he ducked his head under a low hanging branch and kept going.

“Who’s there? Are you OK?” _Of course they aren’t OK_ , Ty thought to himself, _or they wouldn’t be making such heart-wrenching noises._

After a few feet of towering trees, he came into a clearing carpeted with pine needles, the shadows reaching across it like grasping hands. Broken bits of china crunched underfoot and a child’s doll lay abandoned against the foot of one of the trees. A girl, a couple years younger than him, sat in the middle of the clearing, both hands covering her face as she cried.

“Hey,” he spoke quietly, afraid to spook her.

She snatched her head up, her dark eyes growing wider with fright, and she scrambled backwards, her hands clawing at the dark soil.

“Hey, no, it’s OK.” He put out a placating hand as he removed his hood, thinking how stupid he was to forget to remove it in the shadows. Now she was probably frightened out of her mind.

“It’s OK. Don’t be scared.” He sat down in front of her, making himself smaller so she hopefully would find him less threatening. 

She sniffed and Ty suddenly wished he was like his grandfather, who — old gentleman that he had been — always carried a handkerchief, embroidered with his initials, in his pocket. 

“I’m Ty,” he finally offered, the silence of the evening eerie even without the darkness that was taking over the world. 

_Morbidness wasn’t often his go-to feeling_ , Ty thought to himself. Usually, he was the more optimistic one out of him and Tandy. If she had been there he was sure he would have been the one to comment that that means the sun is rising on the other side of the world. He had a feeling that even if it was, there wasn’t much hope to come with the sun. 

“What’s your name?” he asked, speaking to her as if to a young child, afraid to scare her but also unsure of how to comfort someone so clearly devastated. 

“Rose-Marie Chevalier,” she hiccuped, swiping at her nose with the back of her hand, “but everyone calls me Marie.”

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, the darkness surrounding them reminding him that a girl like this should be somewhere bright and warm with a smile on her face and not sitting on the ground in the shadows crying like her heart was broken. 

“We were playing … my little sister, she’s just a baby, only four years old, but she wanted me to play house with her so we came out here to play like we always do.” Her lip trembled and she looked at him with big, tear-filled eyes. “I heard my mom calling me so I stepped away for just a minute and when I turned back around, she was gone. And I can’t find her.”

She continued to sob and Ty felt his heart break from her pain. He wanted to comfort her, strange as it seemed. He had only just met her, but her pain was so hard to see. The comfort of a human touch would probably help her. But her worst fear had already come true, the loss of a loved one, and Ty wasn’t sure if his power wouldn’t affect her fears and make them even worse. 

“You spoke about your mom … did you try to find her?” Ty prayed that this girl’s mom hadn’t been taken too. It was a crushing feeling to realize you are alone in the world with no one to care. Ty had never expected to experience that. He had always had his family, but then his brother had died and his idyllic world had come crashing down. Now his parents were gone to who knows where and he couldn’t find Tandy. Maybe he and this girl had more in common than he thought. 

“No.” She gulped down a sob and rubbed her hands down the tops of her thighs. 

“Why don’t we go look for her?”

She stared at him for a moment and Ty realized that she was still unsure of him.

“Do you know who lives in the gray trailer, right there?” he asked as he turned his head and pointed in the direction of Tandy’s house. 

He turned back around in time to see her head nod. “Do you know Tandy? She’s kinda short, with short-ish blonde hair, about my age …”

“Yeah, I know her. She was gone for awhile, but she’s back now.” She twisted her fingers and stared down at them.

“Well, she’s my best friend and I've been looking for her. She’s lost too. Have you seen her today?”

Marie bit her lip as she continued to twist her fingers together, “If she’s your friend, how did you meet?” 

Ty wanted to laugh. This girl might act timid and scared, but she wasn’t about to tell him about Tandy without any evidence of their friendship. She was smart and fierce and he liked that. It reminded him of Tandy.

“I don’t really have a picture or anything,” Ty pushed his hands into his hoodie pockets, the cooling night chilling his fingers. “Wait,” his hand connected with his mom’s phone in his pocket, “I forgot. My mom’s phone.”

He opened the phone, the wallpaper photo of him as a baby and his dad holding him bringing tears to his eyes. Despite their separation his mom had still kept this photo as her lock screen so she could always look at her family. 

Ty scrolled through his mom’s phone, praying that despite her dislike of social media that she hadn’t deleted it. The Instagram app was the last downloaded app on her phone and he clicked on the multicolored icon. He quickly signed out of his mom’s unused account and signed into his. He scrolled for a while. He and Tandy were usually too busy using their distinctive powers to help people that they hardly ever had much downtime. When they did it was after Connors disappeared and photos of Tyrone Johnson, cop killer, on the internet were definitely not a good idea.

“Here.” Ty turned the phone so Marie could see, the screen bright in the darkness under the trees. 

The photo was more than a few months old, taken when Tandy was the church’s resident teen runaway and he had still been living at home. She, being Tandy, had wanted to take a selfie and snapped it almost before he knew what was happening. Thankfully, she had tickled him at the moment so he didn’t look like a spaced-out idiot, a genuine, if goofy smile splitting his lips. 

Marie smiled slightly, the parting of her lips showing off a gap between her two front teeth that made her look younger than he had first assumed. He was relieved to see her tears replaced by a smile, but as she handed the phone back to him her expression dropped again.

“So … did you see her this morning or not?” Ty asked, feeling frustrated despite himself. He wanted to know if she was OK _now_ , all the waiting was wearing him down. He felt like he was on the edge of a knife, like he was flirting with anxiety.

“Yeah,” Marie sighed, melancholy, “I saw her. She was walking down the road when I saw her from our front porch. I yelled out to her but she must not have heard me, ‘cause she didn’t say good morning back the way she usually would.”

Ty frowned but was broken from his reflection by the sound of a slamming door and a voice calling out into the darkness like he had done only minutes earlier when he had found Marie out here in the woods.

She jumped up suddenly and fled, her voice streaming behind her as she called out for her mother. 

Ty stood, lifting his hood back up over his head, and he followed her to the edge of the trees and watched as she ran into the arm’s of her mother, who cradled her close when she started sobbing. Ty couldn’t hear what they were saying but the mother’s face said it all. 

Ty thought about his own mother and the way she had held him and cried when Billy had been killed. She had clutched him so hard it had been painful, but he hadn’t uttered a word as she cried over the loss of his brother. He wondered where she was now … . _Did she know where she was? Did she know she was missing or was she dead, unable to feel or know anything?_

He swiped at the tears that dripped down his face and decided that he had to continue to look for Tandy no matter what. The church would probably be the best place to look despite the fact that neither of them lived there anymore. It had become a safe haven, a hideout, and she might have gone there if she had been afraid by everything that was happening.

 

————

 

Ty’s feet hit the dusty floor of the church, sending up puffs of dirt and debris around him. The quiet of the country road where Tandy lived was now replaced by the noisy city. Police sirens continued to blare, voices called and screamed and cried on the other side of the beautiful stained glass windows that painted the dusty floor with colors befitting a summer’s day, not what felt like the end of the world. Glass shattered across the street as looters took it upon themselves to steal what wasn’t glued down and the sound of running feet was overtaken by cursing and jubilant, if disturbed, shouts.

Ty tried to block out the noise, calling for Tandy as he paced the aisle leading to the double doorway of the church and back toward the altar steps. He climbed them, searching for any sign that she may have been there but all he saw were the footprints left by his own Nikes. 

He remembered the bathrooms that were on the other side of the double doors leading to the sanctuary and he teleported into first the women’s and the men’s but there wasn’t anyone there. 

Ty lashed out, punching the nearby stall. He drew back his fist, releasing a colorful curse that would have made the nuns at St. Sebastian’s blush before leaning against the sink. 

The windows above the stalls were glass blocks, which usually allowed for sunlight to filter through, but the streets and air were full of smoke from the multiple fires that had erupted all over the city. With the lack of light it was hard to see himself in the mirror, but he looked into it anyways, the darkness of his hood and the shadows surrounding him reminding him of a Grim Reaper at Halloween. His stomach sank as he gripped the edge of the sink with both hands, tightening his fingers on the porcelain until pain stabbed through his fingertips from the strength of his grip. 

Dark thoughts swooped through his head and he couldn’t hold back the tears that seeped from beneath his eyelids. He had tried to stay strong because there was no one else to be the strong one, but the unrelenting pressure and stress was wearing him down. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold himself together. 

His knuckles throbbed where they had connected with the stall as he walked out of the bathroom, too tired and emotionally spent to think of teleporting. He was grateful for his powers now, maybe not as much at first, but truthfully he missed when he was just a regular teenage boy — trying to keep his grades up, playing basketball with his teammates in the afternoons and getting the girl he liked to go out with him. 

He wouldn’t ever wish that he hadn’t met Tandy though. No matter how frustrating she had been at first, no matter how many times she had lied to him and manipulated him. He had believed her because that was who he was, and despite the chip on her shoulder that had formed after years of neglect and her feelings of abandonment. Most of the things she had done had been because of the life she had been leading since childhood. She hadn’t know any better and, when she had, she had pushed her guilt down with a deadly cocktail of stolen prescription pills. Ty understood it all, but he hadn’t agreed with it. 

He was glad that she had been there for him at Roxxon even though he had been willing to sacrifice himself for her and the city. She had hit back and told him that they were in this together no matter what. Ty appreciated her stubbornness then. She had ignored his attempts to do it alone and come after him. He probably would have died without her then, and multiple times since. They were a team now, and even more best friends. He wasn’t ready to let that go. To let her go.

But he didn’t know where she was, when she was or even if she was still alive or blown away to dust like his neighbor had been. 

Ty sunk down on a pew, resting his head in his hands as he tried to ignore the sounds of destruction on the other side of the sanctuary door. His mental and physical tiredness must have caught up with him because the next thing he knew he was waking up to the sound of a helicopter flying overhead. The hum of the rotors was a steady _whomp whomp whomp_ that Ty swore he could feel in his bones. He rubbed at his eyes, surprised that he had fallen asleep. 

The inside of the church was as dark as a crypt and Ty felt another chill of foreboding run down his spine. Suddenly, a bright searchlight shone through the nearest stained glass window, illuminating the church with a bright stripe of light that caused Ty to wince as his pupils contracted. He turned his head when a bright white something caught his eye, brighter than the light that lit up the dust motes floating in the air.

A scene of a white dove on the stained glass window caught his attention, a green leaf gripped between its talons as it flew over a darker scene, what Ty assumed was water or maybe grass but it was hard to see with the limited amount of light as the helicopter flew over the building and the searchlight disappeared. 

Ty rubbed at his eyes, the bright white of the dove seemingly imprinted on his eyelids. He sighed and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, but the dove was still emblazoned across his memory despite the pitch black of the church. 

The imagery reminded him of Tandy and her daggers of light, her power to see people’s hopes. She had felt so hopeless when he had first met her. Nothing in her life had gone right and she was jaded. She thought that the world owed her something because of what the world had taken from her, so she had taken to stealing — things she could wear, things she could sell, things she could get high on — but even that temporary high couldn’t take the place of her lost hopes.

When her powers had manifested she had figured out that part of them, besides the dazzling daggers of light, was her ability to see others’ hopes. Then she had taken to stealing those too, trying to make herself feel better by taking what others cherished, but even that hadn’t worked for long. Finally, she had found her hope, in him of all people. 

It had surprised him when she told him, after everything that went down — their fight at the motel and his subsequent “death” when she had come to get him and told the Loa, Samedi, that she would play the game for his life. That night, after she had found out her mother had relapsed and she had been able to speak without a sniffle interrupting every few minutes, she had told him about her loss of hope when she had thought he was dead. 

It had made him feel guilty almost immediately despite the fact that he knew it wasn’t his fault, that Andre had played them both when he tried to separate them by playing on their insecurities with a series of half truths. The thought that his life, or lack thereof, had such an effect on her that she lost the will to keep going, to keep fighting, had released a feeling of dread in him so strong that he had made her promise, then and there, that she would find something else to hold onto. 

They had found out that they fought better as a team that day, that having each other’s backs was more efficient and less dangerous than doing things alone. Asking Tandy to continue on without him had been hard, but he had done it because he cared about her. But now that she was the one gone and he was losing a sense of hope, little by little, he understood what it had been like for her after realizing that he was gone. 

Thankfully, that had all been smoke and mirrors, despite the real danger that Andre represented. They hadn’t lost each other then, but now that it was a real possibility, Ty felt like he was missing a important piece of himself, like an old board game with only three pawns.

She was the reason he had become who he was, not Tyrone Johnson the student, or Ty the son, boyfriend, basketball player, but the reason he had become a superhero, the reason he kept fighting. Fighting injustice, fighting for those who didn’t have or weren’t allowed a voice. Those who were worse off than them. 

She had become hope for those lost girls, too. She hadn’t given up hope then, hadn’t let the atrocities that Mayhem had visited on the ambulance driver scare her away, hadn’t let the evil that resided in the drug lord’s hearts keep her from searching high and low for any information on them. She had fought so hard for them that she had ended up just like them. Kidnapped and abused, but she still carried on. She had brought light into their darkness, just like she had done for him. 

In a way, Tandy was like the dove in the Bible that showed up after intense times of trouble, terror, like after The Great Flood had ravaged the earth. She would probably snort and roll her eyes if he actually told her this, but she was so much more than she gave herself credit for, even without him. 

Doves were symbols of hope, too, if he remembered his sophomore theology lessons correctly. Maybe it was a sign that his hope, his Tandy, wasn’t gone. He felt a weird sense of belonging, thinking of her as his, but in a way she was. Maybe she was out there and he had given up too soon. 

He had let his fear and anxiety and the shock of the whole ordeal get to him. He hadn’t been thinking clearly ever since he had found his mom gone and the thought of losing Tandy had made him frantic. He needed to calm down, to relax, then he would be able to focus and pinpoint Tandy’s location. 

He had never had a problem finding her before, even when he had been new to his powers. He had always had an innate sense of direction when it came to her, like a compass always pointing north. He felt another wave of remorse, or was it disgust at himself, that he hadn’t realized what he was doing wrong earlier that day and fixed it, but at least he knew where he had gone wrong now and could find her.

 _Please let this work_ , he thought to himself as he closed his eyes and let all other thoughts leave his head. He blocked out the noise of the ravaged city, the thoughts that tried to crowd his mind with doubts and what ifs, and even the sound of his own heart beating as he focused on Tandy. Strangely enough, as soon as he stopped and breathed he saw her smile fill his mind's eye, the scent of her barely there perfume tickled his nose and his feet landed on a nearby street, a very notable street he saw when he opened his eyes. 

Normally, it would be crowded with tourists with their hands wrapped around plastic cups, sometimes beer bottles, walking in and out of the shops and generally having a good time, bar owners hurrying into their storefronts for the busy night ahead, and the raucous noises brought about by many voices calling out to their friends, laughing and the usual hubbub of a multitude of voices.

The bright neon lights and warm yellow haze of the lampposts lining the street were there as usual, but the voices weren’t. The occasional cry or scream filtered through the street and echoed down the alleyways, reminding Ty of what he imagined hell to be like — remembering a passage he had read in chapel one day describing it as being filled with: “the weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 

He shivered despite the humidity that pulled at him like a hundred greedy hands and drew Billy’s hoodie tighter around him, surprised that he hadn’t nearly landed on top of Tandy, as strong as his sense of _her_ had been when he teleported to this spot.

He didn’t see anyone as he glanced around, but he decided he didn’t care whether anyone or everyone else left in the world saw him as he called her name. “Tandy! _Tandy?_ Where are you?” 

A glass bottle clanked nearby as it was kicked by someone and he snatched his head in that direction, almost giving himself whiplash in the process. He didn’t care, ignoring the temporary pain to frantically search the shadows of the alleyway for her familiar face.

“Tandy, are you there?” he asked, barely allowing himself to hope that it was her who had made that noise.

“ _Ty?_ Is that you?” She stepped out into the street, the flashing neon signs lighting her face with multiple colors all at once. He didn’t even answer her, he was so relieved to see her. He stepped forward, closing the distance between them with a few strides and wrapping her up in his arms.

Her breath of surprise whooshed past his ear as he pulled her as close as possible, the faint scent of perfume that he had caught a whiff of earlier suddenly clouding his senses. She must have been uncomfortable under his unrelenting grip, but he didn’t let go. 

He knew that she was just as relieved as him when he felt the touch of her hand on his back before she grabbed fistfuls of his hoodie and held on like she was afraid he would disappear right before her eyes. He wanted to hold her forever, but he knew that craning up on her tiptoes was the only way she could comfortably hug him with her chin on his shoulder, so he reluctantly stepped back after a few blissfully worry-free moments.

“Tandy, I —” “Ty, I —” They both spoke over one another, Tandy grasping her shaking hands in front of her, her wide brown eyes locked on him like she couldn’t bear to look away. 

It felt strange to laugh, but Ty was just so thrilled to see her that he couldn’t hold it in. The feeling of a smile pulling at his lips was so foreign after the horrible day that he had had.

“Why don’t you go first,” Ty offered as he allowed himself to glance over her now that he was able to. He was thankful that she seemed OK, but the way her voice trembled as she started to talk bespoke a depth of emotion that was probably equal to the fear and anxiety he had felt earlier that day. 

“Ty! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” The trembling gave way to anger as her voice gradually grew louder the closer she got to the end of her sentence. “I don’t have your freaky ability to always sneak up on people, usually me, when they least expect it. I had to use my normal, human legs to walk around, I couldn’t teleport without _you_. I went to your house. That gaping front door really scared me, you know.” 

She reached out to whack him on the arm and he couldn’t even bring himself to care that it hurt, because she was there, she was touching him and that was all that mattered. 

“Then I went to the church and you weren’t there either, those stupid stained glass windows with their stupid, judging faces wouldn’t stop glaring at me and I felt like an idiot because I couldn’t find you anywhere and my mom, she wasn’t answering her phone ...” Tandy trailed off and then Ty realized she was crying, tears leaving glimmering trails that reflected the blues, greens and reds of the humming neon signs streaming down her face.

“Hey, hey, _no_ , don’t cry, Tandy, I’m right here.” He tried to comfort her with his words, but she continued to cry, her shoulders shaking from the depth of her feelings and Ty felt his heart break for the second time that day. 

He stepped back into her personal space and let her cry, feeling like a jackass, forgetting in the moment that her mother was also gone, just like his parents, and he had thought it was all over him. _What a great friend you are, Tyrone_ , he thought to himself, _you’re selfish; everything isn’t about you._

He rubbed her back, feeling the shuddering of her sobs against the palm of his hand and in his chest. He wished he could take the pain from her and bear it himself. He had told her they would do everything together so maybe it was best to just be there for her, no matter how badly he wanted to fix it for her. Even with his powers of teleportation, he couldn’t fix _this._

He rested his chin on the top of her head as she continued to breathe erratically, sniffling and hiccuping, and making the crack in his heart widen with the wounded sounds she was making. 

She sighed once before she pulled back, wiping at her cheeks, and Ty wished, once again, that he had a handkerchief, but he hadn’t even brought his own phone when he had left his house earlier.

“I never really thought —” her voice broke and she started again. “I never really thought I would experience the end of the world, but this, this is shittier than anything I could have come up with,” Tandy huffed, her voice wobbly. She sniffed again, wiping her sleeve across her face.

“Hey, it’s gonna be alright.”

“How can you know that, Ty?” Tandy pushed her hair behind her ear impatiently, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Because we’re together.” 

She shot him a “be serious” look, but Ty stepped closer, grabbing ahold of her hand. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I went looking for you at the church, too, and at your house. As soon as I knew something was wrong, really wrong, I thought of you. I — I couldn’t imagine you being gone like my mother or my neighbor, completely disappeared, because then what would I do? I told you to find something else to hold onto after Andre made you see me die, but I didn’t really know how it felt until this morning to lose you, too. When I thought that I might never see you again, I panicked. That’s why it took me so long to find you even with my “freaky ability.” I can’t live without you either. I don’t _want_ to.”

“ _Ty —_ “

“Tandy, I’m serious.”

Tandy’s furrowed brow smoothed out as she looked up at him. The colored lights still shone across her face, but he didn’t see anything else but the softening of her eyes and the way she turned more fully toward him. She opened her mouth and then closed it, at a loss for words maybe, but her fingers tightened around his as she looked away. 

He wasn’t sure what she was feeling despite the intuition that he usually felt around her, especially when they were connected by touch. Then she let go of his hand and he felt her shut down as she walked away. 

He thought she had finally stopped running but apparently he was wrong. He couldn’t let her go, though. He needed to give her a reason to stay.

He teleported a few feet in front of her, forcing her to stop in her tracks, then she made a move to go around him and he jumped in front of her again, not willing to let her leave, not now.

“Tandy.” He tried to reach for her, his fingertips barely grazing the side of her arm before she pulled away.

“No, Ty, I can’t do this again.”

“Do what again?”

“I can’t — _please,_ ” her voice trembled again.

“Tandy, I can’t let you go. What else can _I_ say?” He stepped closer, but this time she stepped back and he stopped, dropping his hands to his sides. He felt empty, hollowed out, bereft, and she was standing right in front of him. 

“I can’t do this, Ty. I can’t even fathom losing you again. Isn’t it just better to stop … whatever _this_ is, before we can’t come back from the ledge. I can’t handle this, I _can’t_.”

“Tandy, I told you. We’re in this together. I’m scared, too, but isn’t it better to go into this knowing what could happen instead of going into it blindly, blissfully unaware? I need you. You’re all I have.” He felt his voice shake, tears pricking his eyes as he thought about all he had lost. He glanced down to her feet, afraid of her reaction, her rejection. 

What he said was true, if he didn’t have her, he had no one. His parents were gone, he didn’t know whether Evita had survived, and he couldn’t go on like that. She was his only hope. 

He closed his eyes, causing the tears in his eyes to roll down his cheeks as he listened to the lonely sounds surrounding them and wished he could muster up the courage to watch her leave him behind, but he wasn’t that brave. 

He almost jumped when she touched him, he was so lost in thought, but the warmth of her hands as she wrapped him in a hug was a welcome relief, the saving grace to pull him out of the suffocating darkness. 

“ _Shh, shh_. I’m sorry. Ty, I’m _sorry_ ,” she whispered as she cradled him close and it was his turn to grab onto her like a lifeline and let his tears of pain, loss and grief fall. She was soft against him, a sharp contrast to the solid bulwark she had put up emotionally only moments before, and he was grateful. 

“Why did you have to start crying?” she mumbled under her breath. He wasn’t sure if she meant for him to hear it or not. “You know I can’t take it when you cry.”

They pulled apart again and Ty figured he should probably feel weird having a breakdown in the middle of a vacant Rue Bourbon, but he really didn’t care. The girl standing in front of him, her lip caught between her teeth as she worried over him, was all he cared about. 

Clouds had blown in off the coast since that morning and they blocked out what little moonlight there was, leaving them surrounded by darkness that the man-made neon signs barely pushed back. 

They stared at each other, an electricity not unlike what buzzed in the marquee hanging above their heads flowing between them. 

“I don’t want you to run anymore, Tandy. I —” Ty paused, struggling to find words to fit the intensity of his feelings. “I don’t want to be the reason or the person that hurts you, so if it’s really what you want, I’ll let you go.” 

_But I love you_ , hung between them unspoken, and he knew she felt it by the widening of her eyes. Tears shone in her eyes, giving her pupils a brilliance that he had rarely seen. 

He worried for a moment that she was crying because she was leaving and she didn’t want to hurt him, but then she stepped closer, the tips of her shoes touching his.

Ty felt something forming inside his stomach, but it wasn’t the churning fear and worry from earlier that day. It was effervescent like the bubbly champagne Tandy had forced him to drink the first night he was no longer a murder suspect. It was the same feeling he got whenever Tandy would shoot him one of her rare, sunny smiles, a feeling unlike one he had ever felt before. 

“Are you sure?” She cocked her head to one side, reminding him of their first meeting. “I mean, I’m a literal mess and I can be really mean when I want to be, and I don’t know how to shut up and I … .” She must have realized she was doing the same thing that she was warning him about because she stopped talking. 

“I’m sure.” 

He watched her for a few seconds more, the tension building, like the moment before the explosion of their powers when they had first touched in the sanctuary of the abandoned church, but this time he wasn’t going to let anything stop him from touching her. 

He reached out a hand, slowly, not wanting to scare her although he knew that Tandy wasn’t frightened by much of anything, and cupped her cheek. Her skin was warm under his palm and she sucked in a sharp breath when his thumb caressed her chin. 

Funnily enough, she did the same thing back, copying his movements down to the thumb stroking across his chin, although he would bet that his skin wasn’t quite as soft or smooth as hers. She narrowed her eyes at him playfully, almost in challenge, and Ty knew that he couldn’t let her be the first one to kiss him or she would hold it over him for the rest of his life, so he bent down as quickly as he could and captured her lips with his. 

She hummed when his lips touched hers, like she was trying to speak but got cut off, and Ty felt it as a slight vibration against his lips. Her eyes were wide open with surprise, but then he pulled her closer with an arm around her waist and she closed them and he did, too, as they got caught up in each other.

She changed the angle of the kiss almost immediately, pushing up onto her toes to get closer and taking charge, but he didn’t care. She could do anything she wanted to him because he would let her. 

Her arms wrapped across his neck so that her shirt rode up and his hand wasn’t gripping fabric anymore but the bare skin of her back. She sucked in another breath, essentially breathing him in at the touch of his skin to hers and he felt like he was flying, but this was much better than anything he felt while teleporting. Maybe it was the force of their powers combined or just the touch of her tongue to his but he felt like he couldn’t breath and he had to pull away, chest heaving. 

“That good, huh?” Tandy asked, a teasing glimmer in her eye, as she stared up at him, one hand resting on the back of his neck distracting him. 

Ty just nodded his head in agreement, unable to speak he felt so overwhelmed. Not that he was complaining. There were way worse things than being overcome by kissing Tandy Bowen. 

“You’re sure you’re not gonna regret this in, _oh_ five years or so?” Tandy drug her fingers across the back of his neck, causing him to shiver. She looked unsure again and all Ty wanted to do was reassure her that everything was going to be fine despite the destruction that surrounded them.

“I could never regret you, never regret _this_ ,” Ty admitted, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Good,” she said, biting her lip again, a frown forming between her eyebrows as she pondered something. “Because ... I love you, too.”

Ty was shocked, she had spoken the words that he had barely allowed himself to think, but he shouldn’t really be surprised. Tandy was always springing things on him. Telling him she loved him was definitely the most surprising thing he had ever heard come out of her mouth.

“ _Yeah_?” he asked, unable to believe that this was where he had ended up when his day had started off so horribly. 

“Yeah.”

“Just remember who said it first,” Tandy mumbled as she pulled him closer again.

Ty sighed as she kissed him again, grateful for the fact that he had found her. She was there with him and nothing — no distance, no catastrophe, no one else — could keep them apart. 

He should probably feel even more guilty, he thought as they got lost in each other again, at being so happy when everything around them was falling to pieces, but he wouldn’t regret this moment no matter what came next.


End file.
